Dreams and Fables: Why Would a Man Just Make His Life Up?
Dreams From My Father’s embellishments were not intended to be parable, allegory, or some other lyrical descriptor of simple lying; these defenses ignore that most people simply would not do what Obama did. Lying about qualifications is the largest sin one can commit when seeking employment or education, and selling a book certainly falls under employment.
Yesterday, David Maraniss — author of the bestselling Barack Obama: The Story, his book which revealed that Obama fibbed about one two thirty-friggin’-eight incidents in his first autobiography — noted that he has been troubled by the response to the book, as he hadn’t intended it to be used to assail Obama’s reputation. Yes, really.
Said Maraniss:
I mean, a memoir is far different from rigorous factual biography. So it’s not as though I’m trying to say, aha, I got you, at each point, I’m just trying to present the way I really found it, which in many cases was different from what he presented.
He was writing a memoir that was shaped through the lens of race, almost entirely. So that led to certain distortions, composite characters, which he acknowledges.
…
You know, it’s been fascinating for me. The right wing sort of is at once dismissing the book, but cherry-picking every single negative thing in it to use against Obama. It’s almost why I didn’t want to write this book.
…
Well, he wrote it when he was in his 30s before he was running for president. He had no clue that people like me would come along later and try to tell the real story.
…
I think he did it for reasons of trying to tell a story about his search for — to find himself. I don’t think he was trying to create a mythological character.
Yikes. There’s enough moral ambiguity, doublespeak, and simple nonsense in there to negate the whole passage as being simply incoherent. I am in my 30s and am not currently interested in being president (it sounds decent, yes, but right now I prefer a job that both challenges my intelligence and allows me to wear gym clothes and shave once a week): does Mr. Maraniss let me off the hook if I spew crap and lies until I hit 40? Can I assume everything Maraniss wrote before 40 is crap?
Obama has had delusions of grandeur his whole life. I doubt he even knows what’s real and isn’t real anymore.
As a child in Indonesia he practiced being the Indonesian president standing on a chair giving speeches. He told his teachers he wanted to be president a practice that continued throughout his life.
Back in Hawaii he told his classmates his father was an African prince. He carved into the sidewalk “Obama is King”. It’s still there.
To call what’s mentally wrong with him Narcissistic Personality Disorder doesn’t go far enough. I’m sure we’re dealing with a psychopath…an empty person who only fakes his humanity. There is no there there and he’s probably extremely dangerous.
“Probably”?
Just look at the harm he’s done to this country already!
Here was a guy, 47 years old, running for President. He had been a community organizer, a State Senator who voted “present” a good deal of the time, and a first term US Senator. Not a very impressive resume for country’s the top job. But he was also an author of two books – both on his own life. After suffering through 3+ years of his Presidency, there can be no surprise in what Mr. Maraniss says, but back in 2008, who knew the Obama bios were full of lies? Unfortunately, not many Americans knew or cared.
I tried to tell everyone I knew that Obama was a no good Marxist tool right after a saw the vidio of him spouting the rubbish that spreading the wealth is “good for everyone”.
Well not one person understood it until after the “vote”. Now many of those same Progressive liberal folks wont talk about it at all.
Wonder why.
Didn’t the Associated Press assign eleven (eleven!) reporters to fact-check Sarah Palin’s book?!? And this was when she was a former governor not running for any office.
But the MSM couldn’t be bothered to check out Obama’s books in 2008!
There is none so blind as he who will not see.
I was telling everyone who came by that he was a fake. I did not care what his racial background was, his body language said he was a con man.
Yes Mr. Harding. He is a fake. The part of his con job that has always puzzled me is his complete blackout of ALL of his academic records from high school right on through law school. His college records, papers, theses, etc. are redacted from our perusal as though they were top secret. Why would this be necessary, and why did the press and the television networks not howl with indignation? Certainly no one could dispute that , had this black out been imposed by a republican candidate, or a conservative one, our “mainstream” media would have moved heaven and earth to reveal them to the public. But with the cipher, obama, not so. Interesting, isn’t it?
He is nothing more than a con man with inferiority complex who would say or do anything to get ahead in life. Same as granny Leezy Warren. Both of them are the product of American Self guilt inflicted by tyrannical American left. Weak up America 2012 is your last chance to say no to socialist dictatorship.
“Weak up America 2012 ”
I assume you mean WAKE UP America, 2012, even though you essentially said the opposite.
The reputation snowball is rolling down the public opinion hill to its predictable crash. I feel sorry for Barry Obama. He has been played by someone far brighter than himself.
I do not feel sorry for Mr. Obama one teensy bit. I want Nemesis to wreak utter havoc on the man and everyone who enabled his lies. I want his fate to be a byword and a curse.
I have no sympathy for ovomit at all. He is a vile, evil man who belongs in prison.
This article is a good reminder of just how spooky the left and their apologists are.
Key to the idea of ‘authenticity’ — now, after years in leftist hands a very slippery word indeed — is that many of the ‘philosophers’ referred to in passing in the article are post-modern, deconstructed French socialists, dedicated to resuscitation of discredited (usually, ridiculous) Marxist ideals.
In this weird twilight world the ‘narrative’ rules all; the only truth is what you assemble from the meaningless pile of untrustworthy material arbitrarily labeled by strangers as ‘facts’. So you assemble your narrative as you go, stitched together in whatever combination best suits your purpose. All morality is a phoney construct aimed at subjugating vulnerable innocents. And the only meaning is that which is ‘validated’ by your narrative.
So…shove steaming piles of crap like this in front of a natural-born manipulator like Obama, especially when young and stoned, and is it any surprise what comes out the pie hole? The real surprise is how many allegedly intelligent conservatives lapped it all up — e.g., the Brookes/Noonan/Krauthammer thing that won’t leave. Ankle-biters like David Maraniss are utterly out of their depth, as this article shows.
I’m not planning on running for President so I’ll just make stuff up. Fairies raised me and so did elephants.
Did the Elephants have Tambourines?
Did you take a ride on the Flying Spoon.
I remember those lyrics, was it the Byrd’s or, maybe Steppenwolf, or hmmm, I seem to recall, P,P and Mary, no, Richard Starky solo, or maybe Golden Earing? I was just singing that song in the shower yesterday.
I think the “flying spoon” is Creedence Clearwater revival – from “Looking out my back door”.
Didn’t Obama from an early age say that he planned to be President when he grew up? If so then I’d dispute that he wrote it prior to thinking about running for President.
I’ll give Obama a pass on this. After Bill Ayers wrote it out of the pile of unpublishable paperwork that Obama had accumulated, with a few oral stories thrown in, I am sure that “Mr. Talks Alot Does Nothing” had sufficient mental acuity or intellectual interest to actually proof read what Ayers read. So all errors most likely have to be attributed to Ayers, not Obama who is not smart enough to practice or understand what the hell Marxist authenticity is. If he wanted to pretend to be authentic, he would not play as much golf and basketball as he does. Just seeing him in action for four or more years on the national stage, I never thought his public persona matched the stuff that was in his first book. It just never matched up. Now if you want to match it to Ayers public reputation, now we are talking. This is a guy who probably always wanted to be black but never was.
I must wonder aloud if anyone would accuse a WHITE president of making stuff up? None of you people said anything about many of Bush’s false claims (to wit, he spoke fluent Spanish and had, at one time, flew jet fighter aircraft). But President Obama is an African-American of pure, if somewhat diluted, Kenyan descent, and that makes him fair game for all the racists. Correct? Is that your sick strategy, since you obviously can’t win in November on the facts? To accuse a sitting President of making stuff up about himself? But I encourage you, keep it up! You’ll show yourselves for who you are: little racist people who hate Our Dear President because he is a Kenyan-American, via Hawaii.
blah, blah, blah … BUSH’S FAULT … blah, blah, blah … REPUBLICANS ARE THE DEBLE … blah, blah, blah … STARVE KIDS … blah, blah, blah …
LE: The “if you disagree with the Castro wannabeyou’re a racist trope”,is an obsolete libel, just like your idiotic sixties moniker.As a matter of fact, Bush DID fly F102 jetfighters in his ANG unit,a difficult and dangerous task Obama could not even contemplate without an affirmative action program for minority losers,which Obama was, until discovered by white, left-wing plutocrats,who needed a token negro to represent them. The only official racism in the US today,is the anti white/asian disrimination of affirmative action, which got an unqualified, marxoid, cokehead lying punk into Yale and Columbia, and ultimately to the presidency,where his monumental incompetence was recently revealed to the world at the G20 conference.As for your” Dear President”(Are you living in North Korea?)winning re election,did you see today’s polls? It’s 5 months out, and he’s already triling Romney.Your vicious,increasingly clownish, idiot president is going down, LE,and your dreams of a Stalinist America will be going down with him.
I must wonder aloud if anyone would accuse a WHITE president of making stuff up?</I.
When all you have is the race card to cover for Obama, you've got nothing.
And for the record, white politicians have been called for lies. Remember Biden's failed presidential campaign when it was proven that he'd plagerized speeches by a British politician about his (Biden's) background? Yeah, he was called on that. We've also called politicians for exaggerating their Vietnam experience (Kerry).
Please tell us you’re being sarcastic. Or hallucinating. It’s hard to tell, so…
Ever heard of a WHITE President named George Walker “Bush Lied People Died” Bush?
Or the one called William Jefferson “I Never Had Sex With That Woman” Clinton?
Or another one, Gerald Rudolph “There Is No Soviet Domination Of Eastern Europe And There Never Will Be” Ford?
Surely you remember Richard Milhouse “I Am Not A Crook” Nixon?
Actually, I think Obama’s doing OK in that regard. He, himself, hasn’t played the race card too frequently on his own behalf. (He prefers the Bush card.) It’s his supporters that can’t seem to separate political opposition from racial animus.
They need to learn that Obama’s current troubles are not a symptom of racism. The kind of attacks he’s experiencing simply come with the job. Affirmative action does not. If Black people can’t take the heat, they should stay out of the White House.
P.S. – By “hasn’t played the race card” I mean he hasn’t tried to shut down criticism by explicitly blaming the opposition to his policies on racism. He has his supporters to do that for him. Some of his actions and statements might lead one to imagine that his reticence is a strategy rather than a reflection of his actual beliefs.
Of course he was being sarcastic. Here are some of the give aways (my emphasys):
- “an African-American of pure, if somewhat diluted, Kenyan descent”
- “Our Dear President” (a real lefty will never use that phrase typical of communist tyrannies)
- “he is a Kenyan-American, via Hawaii.”
- “To accuse a sitting President of making stuff up about himself?” (Because we all know presidents never ever tell a lie…)
Sexist! Racist! Homophobic! Here we go; it’s bumper sticker time.
Obama 2012: Because 4 Years of Failure & Corruption Are Not Enough!”
Lovely Earth is a known satirist; unfortunately, too many people have lost their ear for satire. LE, guess you’re going to have to use a heavier hand from now on – people don’t get it.
“unfortunately, too many people have lost their ear for satire.”
That’s because the real thing has become too similar to the parody. For instance, some years ago I read that the EU recommends referring to Islamic terrorism by other terms that don’t associate terror with Islam, and one of the terms suggested was ‘anti-Islamic terrorism’ – I was sure it was a satire, turns out it was true. So how can one tell the difference anymore?
Sad, but true. Stuff that is so completely at odds with reality – so COMPLETELY ridiculous – that it MUST be intentional parody…
… turns out to be the firmly held convictions of a large percentage of the population, many of whom appear to be intelligent people capable of rational thought.
(Please note, I said APPEAR to be.)
But at least nobody is confusing a Saturday evening comedy show with actual news reporting. I mean, NOBODY really believes that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house.
Right?
Right.
But for the record, LE is a satirist. She came out from behind the parody for one post a few weeks back and spoke from her heart, and spoke well. She’s a friend, folks, so just laugh when you read her posts.
@LovelyEarth
Are you stupid or insane? Every word out of ovomits mouth is a lie. His lawyer admitted in court the HI BC is a FRAUDULENT document. There are 38 lies in his “autobiography.”
What part of he’s a psychopath don’t you get? If this country were as racist as morons like you claim, he wouldn’t have been elected.
I don’t know lovely. I have seen pictures of GWB flying the F102 Delta Dagger. It is jet powered and os c;assified as fighter. (That’s what the “F” stands for.) There are also videos of W addressing Spanish speaking audiences in spanish. So I will leave the visual and aural evidence for your inspection.
Who exactly has accused Obama of ‘making stuff up’? Not your ‘little racist’ people but Maraniss, a true-blue, completely undiluted liberal, an Obama-lover.
And I love that ‘if somewhat diluted’ blood of a pure Kenyan. So much for the woman who gave him birth, consigned to an ‘impure’ status. So, tell me again, who hates women?
Maraniss is quite the opportunist that all liberals are. He made a pot of gold with this book on Obama (much more than he made with his earlier book on Clinton), enjoying No 1 status on the Times’ bestseller list. He then gives this self-serving interview to a liberal rag, saying he meant no harm to Obama, only these evil conservatives have cherry-picked his book to mean Obama harm.
Like all liberals, including Hollywood stars, he used Obama to make his money but re-affirms his undying loyalty to the Boss. They have no honor, period.
They have no honor?
Sarbo, they laugh at the concept of honor!
Lovely,
You obviously missed the subject of the article, namely, Maraniss’ book and which details–38 times–the fabrications of a then 30-something Barack Obama. It was HE that engaged in “making stuff up.” We conservatives simply don’t have to do so. Moreover, and as regards Democrats generally, don’t you find it curious that so many of this ilk engage in this exercise? Kerry and his Swift boats; Hillary and dodging Balkan sniper fire; Liz Warren and her native “ancestry”…
It’s as though they have neither the genuine credentials, legitimate experience and/or actual achievement upon which to stand. And folks like you take it in-stride, lap it up and then advocate on their behalf. Personally, I’d feel violated but then again, that’s just me.
But President Obama is an African-American of pure, if somewhat diluted, Kenyan descent, and that makes him fair game for all the racists.
Pure if diluted? You mean he’s a pure bred Luo (there is no such race as African) but happens to have 50% white genes. Right so. Worry not, Bammy doen’t have a clue how African tribalism works either.
Did you read that fom the President’s autocue? It’s daft enough to be an Obamaism.
Barry O is not a Marxist — just a professional BS artist. Marxism and Alinskism would require waaay too much study and discipline.
Young Barry discovered early (probably in High School) that he can get really far — with very little effort — if he just rides the appropriate PC-wave. (VDH is, as far as I know, the first and surely most articulate author to espouse this theory.)
Maranis’ book shows how Obama was evolving his “narrative” over the years — to catch each new surf to carry him to the next level. Thus, Barry begot Barack Hussein (“son of the Kenyan finance minister” born in Kenya) who begot “There are no red states or blue states” Senator Obama. Who was floated to the very top by the muddled “intellectual” and emotional currents of the establishment-media’s and our aspirational intelligentsia’s longings for the “historically transformative” president.
Not having any ideas of his own, Obama has been perfectly willing to BLINDLY follow the “established wisdom” of the super-liberal “smart set” he is “leading” — while also acting like a particularly obnoxious Chicago alderman. (See the Tom Blumer’s posting today.)
“Barry O is not a Marxist — just a professional BS artist…” I submit that he would not be Marxist enough to be a true academic, but he is good enough to apply it on the ground. In actuality, he seems to be a form of fascist with the anomaly that he hates his nominal country of birth.
Banality of Obama is not good news. If Occam’s Razor explanation is correct — no evil (or any other type of) genius, no elaborate conspiracy (except for the long-standing “conspiracy of media fools”) and no demonic fiendishness (but a slightly psychopathic slacker with a great delivery making him sound “thoughtful and knowledgeable”) — then we have the president we “deserve.” And, with exception of the lucky break we got 1980 with Reagan, we have been on the same (mostly declining) trajectory since Nixon won GOP primary in 1968.
This interpretation implies that many of our most serious problems will not magically disappear even if Barry O. goes away. Conservatives over-focusing their (legitimate) frustrations and concerns about America’s future on this particular political opportunist — make a serious mistake as it keeps us from thinking about and working on solutions of the deep, underlying problems in our society and political culture.
What is this “personally like him” business?? This should not come in the way of telling the truth about him!! He may be a nice guy but when he makes up his life according to his dreams or his father’s dreams whom he did not really get to know then its all a concoction that nobody should believe.
Yet he managed to fool the American public or even the world public. For that the American public is at fault because of this “personally like him” business!!
David Steinberg shows a deep understanding of how Obama was susceptible to being used by those who cared nothing for him. As terrible a leader as he makes and aside from the question of how he ever could have been chosen, he is still, after all, a human being. There’s a Shakespearean ring of truth to David’s description that broadens one’s sense of Obama’s fatal flaw, even as we are the victims of it. There’s so much info available about Obama, but to me this was something different. Btw, if David reads this, invaluable means very valuable, rather than not valuable–couldn’t restrain myself.
This is the most insightful analysis of why Obama lied that I have read. Your suggestion that he was “burnishing his authenticity” in order to align himself with an oppressed group is exactly right. It also provides some insight into what kind of persons were influencing Obama and directing him towards community activism and politics.
Back in the 1930s there were many Germans who believed that the communist revolution they were hoping for would come about NOT as a result of an alliance of revolutionaries with the proletariat class. Instead, the revolution would come about as a battle between capitalism and the intellect. Obama wrote his fake life stories thinking that if he aligned himself with Blacks, his “intellect” would automatically be on the correct side of the revolutionary movement he hoped to become part of. Seeing the revolution as capitalism versus the intellect also accounts for why the mainstream media have been so prolific in praising his supposed intelligence and intellectuality–the media gurus see themselves as part of the vanguard in the battle of capitalism versus the intellect. Unfortunately, the capitalism versus the intellect revolution morphed itself into fascism–that morphing is probably inevitable.
Obama and the mainstream media see themselves as today’s “intellect vs. capitalism” movement; that is why Obama writes and why Maraniss writes about Obama’s writing and why Maraniss sees nothing wrong with Obama’s writing and can’t understand why the right is using his (Maraniss’s) book as a weapon against Obama.
Mr. Steinberg: I’m interested in the sources that supposedly ground Obama’s prevarications in Marx and the Frankfurt School. Can you provide any specific citations that back up your claim?
Don, Obama’s Community Organizing tactics, slogans and actions when an adult in Chicago are straight out of Saul Alinsky’s, ‘Rules for Radicals’ book.
Saul Alinsky, a Communist/ Marxist is often referred to as the, ‘Father of Community Organizing’.
Obama’s often been quoted to say the ‘best education’ he’d received wasn’t form Occidental, Colombia nor Harvard but his years community organizing in Chicago.
The book, ‘Rules for Radicals’ has a line that’s frighteningly apt for the CiC’s recent actions, ‘..those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be’.
THAT’S what the author may be referring to. JMO.
Do your own homework. It’s become a truism that anyone steeped in Conservatism these days has already read, at a minimum, Marx’s planks and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. The Frankfort School may be “extra credit,” but at the very least most would know it is the Marxist Euro-trash that infected the American institutions with Marxism in the early 20th century.
In his 2004 convention speech, he offered the perfect image to the eyes of any of us waiting for some utopian vision to “materialize” on our TV screen: Young, charming, articulate and with an exotic life story full of the fanciful attributes of the supposed burgeoning hero, by the lights of the left. The poor innocent boy growing up in modest settings, his young mind forged in some distant (and presumably idyllic) culture, and returning home to recognize like nobody else could racism, injustice, ignorance, bigotry of our corrupt society, just the right fellow to pull the rest of us out of it…
That does not qualify one for governing, it only qualifies one for getting elected and accepting a Peace Nobel price, on the presumption that he merited it before having shown exactly how. The puppeteers could not have it better. A self-absorbed man is an ideal target for the accomplished manipulator(s), the kind that stays in the shade and exploits the reflexes of a flamboyant fool, by knowing just which string to pull, how and when.
We should remember that he turned the congress loose on writing a 2700 pages law that was too urgent to pass for any reasonable person to have the time to read. He did not write it. He was only the figurehead from somebody else to write it. We have not quite identified who the string pullers really are, but we have started to notice that the man whose resume was written with invisible ink, (to make room for two autobiographies!) is not particularly talented for running anything. We have seen the costume, but we don’t know the man!
Some of us knew the communist SOB the instant we laid eyes on him in that ’04 speech. I’ve known lots of union reps, community organizers, and left-wing front group leaders and I said to myself, “so you’re they one they think they can dress up and fool people with.” They’re good at wearing the mask. They can put that avuncular arm around you with seeming affection – while they feel for the soft spot – but the mask never fits perfectly and it slips off from time to time. The arrogance and condescension is never far below the surface and they just can’t keep it from popping out from time to time. He’s actually not very good at keeping the mask in place because he’s too enthralled with the power and perks that he likes to flaunt. He’s reached the level of hubris that usually foretells the fall, but while he may fall, those who put him up and who slavishly backed him will do everything to hide his fall, to prop him up. We on the other side of the ditch should be unrelenting in mocking him. Cries of racism be damned; we’ve been called racist so many times it shouldn’t matter to us anymore. He can’t stand being mocked. He can’t stand being “dissed” any better than some illiterate gangsta’ from the ‘hood can stand it; some things Hahvud can’t fix. Mock him, diss him, and he will explode. He might end the World with that explosion, the idiots did make him the most powerful man in the World, but saving the World from him is worth the risk.
“Mock him, diss him, and he will explode. He might end the World with that explosion, the idiots did make him the most powerful man in the World, but saving the World from him is worth the risk.”
Completely agree. This is the way to get rid of him. Taking him seriously only validates the preposterous nonsense he spouts. This is why the media don’t mock him. Chances are many reporters and commentators see through him but eschew calling him out for the same reasons decent people don’t mock the mentally deficient: they know he can’t handle it and fear the inevitable denouement.
Yep.. I recall reading Freddoso’s and Corsi’s books regarding our present-day empty vessel in ’08 thinking, ‘Obama’s the Left’s version of J C Watts. Minus the intellect, true athleticism, Christian values/ spiritual side, business sense and courage to call out the CBC, Sharpton, Jackson etc.,
JC Watts was a multiple elected Conservative from Oklahoma. A college and CFL football star, pastor, author and successful businessman nowadays. In other words Watts has REAL, honest to God accomplishments.
Obama’s a grifter, whose stooped so low as to suggest to newlyweds in foregoing THEIR marriage registry and instead funnel THEIR upcoming wedding gifts to Obama.
I thought it was poor taste for the 1st lady wombat to suggest during their Hawaiian Christmas, 5-Star holiday resort to send money, even only a couple bucks to the Obama campaign. The wedding gift push is far more disgusting.
The dude, his administration are POS to the nth regard.
Why do you guys all have to over-analyze this monster? He’s a stone psychopath, plain and simple. This accounts for everything he does and says. Any other interpretation of his behavior is actually giving the creature a pass.
Hare’s Psychopathic Checklist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist
The two factors
Factor 1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism”
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
Callousness; lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
Factor 2: Case history “Socially deviant lifestyle”.
Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
Parasitic lifestyle
Poor behavioral control
Lack of realistic long-term goals
Impulsivity
Irresponsibility
Juvenile delinquency
Early behavior problems
Revocation of conditional release (Not relevant here, he’s never been in the can yet, that we know of.)
Traits not correlated with either factor
Promiscuous sexual behavior
Many short-term marital relationships (Probably more “exotic” in this case.)
Criminal versatility
Acquired behavioral sociopathy/sociological conditioning (Item 21: a newly identified trait i.e. a person relying on sociological strategies and tricks to deceive) (WHOA NELLY! See above article.)
Anybody who’s taken the trouble to be informed can easily supply multiple examples from O’s record for each element in the checklist.
Many commentators have picked up on the Factor 1 traits, aggressive narcissism, but haven’t connected the dots to Factor 2 traits, which completes the diagnosis. In any case, element 4, lack of remorse or guilt, is the central trait common to all psychopaths, which allows the other traits to happen. I think we have ample evidence of O’s absence of a conscience.
The record to date is bad enough; it get really scary when you consider that psychopaths are capable of absolutely anything, if in their aberrant judgment it works to their benefit.
3 of us have called Obama a psychopath. I did in the very first comment. I came to this conclusion after studying him as closely as possible since 1/2008. It took me years to figure him out. I watch almost every Obama video and look at every Obama photo. I’ve made 100s of videos of him on You Tube. I didn’t come to my conclusion lightly because a psychopath is pretty much the worst diagnosis, with absolutely no cure, you could have.
Fasle dichotomy, John.
Being a Marxist is not at all incompatible with being a psychopath. Many have been both.
Obama is both.
It’s a dog eat, dog world…in Obama’s case a man eat dog world.
Obama’s mother was named Stanley because his grandfather felt cheated he didn’t get a boy and the whole family have been Marxists. They do what they do because they don’t care about the consequences to others(A Boy Named Sue was a humorous song not parental advice)and they find the intellectual but amoral world of Marxism to their liking. They can be who they want to be, create new identities when its convenient and put people into useful unenlightened slots that justify not finding them useful anymore. My grandmother had racist tendencies, etc. You can even create phony people who are more “authentic” and describe a heroic personal journey arc that is really just a jerk puking in his dorm room.
I don’t think that this “memoir” was ideologically driven, instead Marxism is an ideal cover philosophy for an amoral psychopath.
— noted that he has been troubled by the response to the book, as he hadn’t intended it to be used to assail Obama’s reputation. Yes, really.
Maraniss may be demurring because he’s getting heat from his WaPo buddies.
Comments above…
Barry did say about the 3rd grade he was gonna be president. Allowing that kids say a lot of stuff, the assumption that Nightmares From Dad was written (ghost or otherwise) w/o presidential designs in mind is a flawed assumption.
After what he has done and is doing to this country, no criticism and no mockery of Obama is off limits.
“the assumption that Nightmares From Dad was written (ghost or otherwise) w/o presidential designs in mind is a flawed assumption.”
Exactly. Seriously, why would a guy who was essentially a nobody at the time write not one an autobiography? And, even more important, why would anyone want to publish it? Publishers have very little interest in books unless they have a significant potential audience, either lots of ordinary people or smaller numbers of very influential people. In other words, if they thought they’d sell millions of copies to ordinary folks, the book would be attractive to them; I think we can dismiss this as highly improbable in Obama’s case, at least at that time.
It’s SLIGHTLY more probable that they thought they might get points from some important critic or social group if they published an autobiography by a then-obscure semi-nobody but I’m really not buying that either.
Why would a man just make up his life? Simple: He is not happy with his real life.
I learned about this phenomenon in my freshman psychology class (perhaps if Barack Obama had actually attended classes he might have understood himself better). MSU (making stuff up) is common among children and young teenagers. Most people mature to the part that they are happy with who they are and feel good about their real accomplishments. Obama is – apparently – one of those who never self-actualized.
Typical Obama on display at the outset of this video, repercussions stated with absolute authority if (whatever he’s pushing at the moment) isn’t accepted.
Which is, ladies and gentlemen, pure crap. Obama’s entire shtick is a con.
It’s a little bit cathartic
Trenchant observations Mr. Steinberg. And here I thought you were going to say he cringed at the thought that in reality he was a pantywaisted Momma’s boy so he had to portray himself as badder than bad and “cool”. I think his whole life is a case study of shape shifting and identity cross dressing. In fact “his” book needs an IdentiKit instead of footnotes.
Isn’t the real question whether Marion Obama is just your garden variety con man who happened to stumble into the greatest con in human history, or whether the deceipt he calls his life was guided and shaped at every step by Chicago marxists, notably Frank Marshall Davis, Ayers Sr and Jr, and now Valerie Jarret.
You can make a case that he stumbled into the fact that with his 6.4% african negro heritage he could pass himself off as a negro, and with his normal IQ and 99% white upbringing pass himself off as a clean and articulate version of Rev Al and Farrakam. Surely he must have marvelled at every step how salivating liberals were falling all over himself pretending that he was a genius instead of an undisciplined, unaccomplished, unaware buffoon. After a couple of decades of that, who wouldn’t think they were one in a trillion? Even Lebron couldn’t just walk into a title in spite of being a one in a trillion physical specimin. But Marion did…unbelievably he did it.
But I lean toward the guiding hand theory. The evidence of the Ayers (father and son) connections are overwhelming, and the thread through Chicago for a chooming Hawaiian boy who hates cold weather is impossilbe to discount. Gee, isn’t it strange that our little marxist ended up in the city that has been th center of American marxism for five decades.
HE will never feel any shame. WE, as Americans, have to. The damage he has caused is reason enough, but in addition to that, if we don’t face up to the fact that we let the Chicago slimebags sieze our country and get to the very brink of destroying it, it will happen again after we clean out the cesspool this time.
I think Frank Marshall Davis was from Chicago, exiled to Hawaii or something and Valerie Jarrett’s former father-in-law worked with Davis, intimations that they both shared communist sympathies.
Going on vague memory but the chooming Hawaiian kid ending up in Chicago with all of its subsequent attendant influences was no accident.
Was one of thr thirty eight falsehoods the fact that he was not baptised, although he said he was? This simple fraud causes a big conflict of interest.In Muslim eyes he has not formally renounced their religion. Many Muslims say “He is one of us.” Other Muslims say “He is an apostate.” Obama is caught in this tension. He always has to prove (by actions the Christians should not notice) to the Muslims that he has not betrayed their religion. Their religion is so politicised that this means compromising the security of the USA and its allies. Some of these compromises can be seen (eg the publicity seeking when an anti terrorist op takes place) and some can be suspected, (eg Iran), but Congress and the public should refuse to give responsibilties to a man who is so conflicted.
How many thousand journalists are there in the West? Only one has brought this fraud to public attention. Her name is Madeline Brook and she did so on Feb 26 2010 in Canada Free Press. She revealed that Jeremiah Wrights church has Muslims as permanent members of the church and does not baptise them. They can believe in Mohammed and call themselves Christian. Obama’s “comversion” was, at best, a moment of introspection. There was no baptism ceremony. He did not renounce other religions in order to become a Christian. He is still a Muslim, in the eyes of many Muslims. If he was a genuine and enthusiastic convert the Mulsims would be angry and humiliated. He always has to show by anti – American actions that he does not deserve the death sentence that can be imposed on apostates.
Deconstructionists, and other such “thinkers” do not think that there is truth. All truth is relative according to them. Well, I would have to say Leftists and Democrats (I repeat myself) have taken this to a new level. When a 100% white woman can declare herself a woman of color and be defended by Leftists, truth indeed has no meaning for such people. Ditto for O who made up things about his life that were simply not true, and Leftists voice no criticism of him for doing so.
He’s a Soviet/Russian creation and his legend is rapidly falling apart.
Nope. He’s just as “Chicago” as the Sears Tower or the White Sox.
It’s all one Marxist movement.
Obama seems to see our country as one huge university. He does not try to deal with reality as it is; he invents narratives that have their own reality. Maraniss, who should know better, seems to have bought into the academic/political view of the world and life. Truth is a “contruct.”
i think maybe obambam may have been a hunter, or fisherman in another life. i was in a hunting club for several years long ago, and i have never heard such a stretching of the truth in my entire life, until now. of course those guys didn’t expect any grups to believe them, or try to pass their lies off as truth. they were mostly good, honest men. anybody telling lies like that for profit (shall we say), would have immediately been pegged as a scoundrel.
this guy is no stranger to lies and deceit. he has conned an entire huge group of important people. he is probably the greatest con-man to ever live. its only when he went into something outside his wheelhouse (guns & gun politics) that he stumbled. my dad always taught me to never play another man’s game for keeps. good advice.
I’ve been wondering what Frank Marshal Davis Jr. aka Barack Obama left out of his life story…and now I know what it was.
He’s 1/32 native american (probably Cherokee) and is a distant cousin of Elizabeth Warren AND Ward Churchill.
The “Unconstrained” (cf, Sowell) is both fantastically free and abysmally alone. Sickness unto death is actually “unto death” only if one rigidly disparages Faith. But Faith must inexorably face that which constrains us.
When Man is “all one needs”, then Man is all one has, and one’s life ultimately winds up as what Zappa was famously photographed with in his hands.
“Modernity”, the stylish construct, does it to itself.
It has nothing — NOTHING — to fall back upon as an excuse.
/forgive me — sloppily-edited “stream of consciousness” — but DAMN, I had fun writing it.
I think many people are missing the forest for the trees. Barak Obama may have African genes but he is as white culturally as George W. Bush. He was raised by his white grandparents and his white mother. He spent more time with Indonesian stepfather than his biological father and we all now know after the Zimmerman affair that all non blacks are effectively white.
I do not doubt that Obama has identity issues. I believe that Dreams is a deception but the person Obama wished to deceive is himself. Like many white radicals he wants to be black. He just happens to be lucky enough to have African genes.
Obama is the “man of a thousand lies,” and nary an ounce of Truth. Rather than waste our time by trying to run down and dissect each and every lie, it is probably enough to know that its all lies, and to focus in on his actions.
The corporate workplace and, just as sadly, the formerly respected union trades, are lousy with powerful, self-worshiping know-nothing, racist-of-color clowns and their liberal white enablers. The social engineers have institutionalized the “Mentor” roles not to coach such drones into competence, but to do their work for them or to ensure their every little walk to first base is recorded as a home run. America is sinking beneath mediocrity as those of us carrying the weight are gradually opting out by accepting less resonsible positions, retiring, or otherwise slouching towards Galt’s gulch.
Dreams and Fables: Why Would a Man Just Make His Life Up?
Because he is pathological.
Not sure what to make of Maraniss’ defense…is there some number of inaccuracies that suggest a memoir should be in the fiction section of a bookstore? Or is 38 a low number and DOMF should always be described as a biography?
Seems like the Preezy’s been making stuff up but then my parents were old school. They prized the truth over storytelling.
Ayers wrote the ‘autobiographies’ to smooth the way for Obama to become Mayor of Chicago. Hence the evocation of a supposed authentic ‘black experience’ life story. Then along came events, dear boy, events…
And if we can restore a legitimate government next Fall, in the ensueing treason trials we can expose the “events” that led to Ayers’ liason with the Soros cabal that crashed the economy in ’08 to facilitate their coup d’etat that installed the President Manque. Invest in rope and learn to tie a proper hangman’s knot; we’re going to need quite a few.
Biographers stand in relation to the scienc of psychological profiling as astrologers stood in relation to astronomy. I doubt seriously that the national security services of major world powers (other than our own) have
spent much time mulling for long over what is in print about President Obama–the biography by Steve Sailer being a possible exception. It is astounding
how much basic factual confusion abounds in what has circulated about the
President. In fact, frankly, not a hell of a lot is securely known about many periods of his life. His mother’s life is even more of a “paste and scissors”
job. While Ann Dunham seems to have had many friends, it is unclear whether she ever had any abiding close relationship with either of her putative husbands or with any other sexual partner, if there were others. In terms of
traits with significant heritability, the President’s breeziness is a matter of concern vis a vis the dissembling strategies of his maternal grandfather and his putative father, Barack Obama, Sr. Stan Dunhan seemed to have an anchor on his “creative” reworkings of fact—doing so for effect upon others and not at self-delusion. The President’s father, a textbook case of character disorder, narcissism, psychopathy–seemed to buy into his own dissemblings. Madelyn Dunham appears to have been the main positive support pillar to the President in his formative years. Her mother, Leona Payne,was
even brighter than Madelyn, if not as well educated. Stanlee Ann Dunham’s
insistence that her son got his brains from a Kenyan psychopath appears …
may we say?…racist. ?
Interesting to find both comments in the same thread. Of COURSE many of us, like Art Chance, knew him for a Marxist from the get-go. It didn’t take any serious study, either.
But yet, we have these big-shot “conservatives” who are completely taken in by this obvious fraud!
What does that tell you about this Foolish Trinity, and those like them?